End of Days
by Eilidh17
Summary: Totally AU. Takes Sam's interaction with Fifth in season six and wanders down a path of doom for Earth.


**End of Days**

"Daniel, this couldn't go down any other way. You know that." Jack looked out the vast window of the Prometheus briefing room, to the vista of a normal-looking Earth spinning lazily below them, and tried to find some solace in his words. All this-familiar and unfamiliar places, homes, his cabin and its lake with no fish, the greatest achievements of mankind-would be gone in a matter of hours.

Daniel was wired with stress and exhaustion; Jack could see this in his friend's stance and sullen demeanor. Two days warning was all they had to evacuate Earth. Two days. They didn't even bother kidding themselves by discussing likelihoods and probable scenarios, and Jack knew this was what bothered Daniel the most.

"Knowing and accepting isn't the same thing, Jack." He stood facing the window, arms drawn tight around his chest in an all too familiar stance. "How many people can we save? Since when did we get to play god with the lives of mere mortals and say its okay?"

"We don't and it's not. Never will be."

"Yeah." Daniel turned to face him, eyes downcast. "And yet that's what we've done. I can't justify the rightness in all of this even thought it exists. All I see is faces of people I know, friends I've made, my neighbors… and I can't make this right."

"We've done all we can. One Stargate and one ship with only two days…" The finality of life was suddenly pressing down on Jack. "The Daedalus wasn't even close to being flight ready. If we'd had more time."

Daniel looked up at him, brow furrowed, gaze hardened. "The Replicators weren't really that big on announcing their intentions before shooting a time dilation device into the sun and setting it to _very_ fast forward."

"No," Jack agreed with a stiff nod. "You know Carter's blaming herself for this. She made a judgement call and it was a bad one."

"She couldn't have known."

"But she should have. Underestimating the Replicators has hurt us in the past and now it's going to all but kill us as a species. In my book we call that a bad call."

"Because she got close to Fifth? I wasn't there, remember?"

"Ascension had its perks. Consider this one of them. Anyhow, the Replicators escaped the time dilation field and took off with the technology before the Asgard could stop them. It's all in the report."

"Yeah, so I remember."

"The thing is, betrayal is an easy lesson to learn when you've got a good teacher, and Carter inadvertently taught Fifth a little too well."

"You blame her?'

What did he feel? If he looked out the window he could see North America below them, cloud-dappled and thrumming with life. Geosynchronous orbit had them locked high above Colorado. He tried not thinking about the billions of lives that would be snuffed out in a blinding flash when the planet fried under the blast of a sun gone supernova prematurely.

"Remember the Enkaarans?"

Daniel nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes I do."

"Remember when you gave me another solution?"

"I took your orders more literally than you intended them to be, but it worked."

"Then, yes. It's all in the interpretation, and I guess Carter felt the same way. She went looking for another solution to the problem, but came up short in the answer department. She made a promise to Fifth we couldn't afford to keep."

"Answer the question, Jack." Daniel tossed a thumb over his shoulder at the window. "Do you blame her for this?"

"If you want me to play the emotional card, then yeah… I do." Jack dropped his head to the briefing table and groaned. "Just… don't tell her that, okay? I've had a hard enough time convincing her otherwise, to have it all come undone in one angry swoop. She needs to stay focused."

"So, what are we doing here again? Still sorting through the SGC's wish list of who merits saving and who might be entitled to a second thought?"

"We leave the 'gate open until half an hour before the blast wave hits Venus and then we jump into hyperspace. You know the drill."

"Yeah… the drill." Daniel turned back to face the window, looking off to the left as though searching for the death that would soon be coming their way.

In truth, if what Carter told him was right, he doubted very few people would even know what hit them.

Jack stood and moved around the table, pulling up beside Daniel and nudging him lightly. "I know it's no consolation, but we've collected a fair number of the objects from that manifest I had you put together. Couldn't save it all, but we made an effort."

"Over lives?"

"Never over lives, but every man, woman and child that 'gated out carried more than just basic personal items. No choice. You should have seen Fraiser trying to control a FRED with a pack weighed down with seeds and crap. We've got SF's down there tossing anything and everything they can get their hands on through the wormhole. It's not pretty, and we've gone past being organized and slid all the way to desperate, but what choice do we have?"

"Thank you, Jack."

"For?"

"Saving a little slice of our culture."

"Let me guess, you thought I had you draw up a manifest just to keep you occupied?"

Daniel shrugged. "Considering the restrictions you set me: Size, access, yadda… the thought had crossed my mind."

"Yeah, well, being on SG-1 all these years taught me that we can't go forward as a people if we don't have something from the past to grow on. Sometimes people aren't enough."

"Another hard lesson?"

"Nope. Surprisingly easy."

"And the animals?"

"Two by two. Walter is running his own Noah's Ark down there as we speak."

"That's something, I guess."

It had to be. "What we can't save, Daniel… we'll just have to remember."

The End


End file.
